Book Reviews , Peek, blurbs and excerpts

Robert Sardello & his Soul Based Economics approach

2010-02-14T23:57:00.001-08:00

Robert Sardello & soul based economics : books

Reading Soul Journey and the Master this time , was writing on Spirituality and Economics and their inter connectedness and soul based economics.

In the process, he referred to one writer, Robert Sardello and his approach to Soul based Economics. Searched Amazon.

Most of his books got 5 star rating and here is the review page of his books :

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Robert+Sardello&x=22&y=18

Interview with Orhan Pamuk : 02.Feb.10.The Hindu

2010-02-03T02:44:00.000-08:00

‘Writing and writing is my happiness’
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Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature, is a writer with a formidable international reputation. Deeply rooted in a liberal tradition that values tolerance, freedom, and a respect for the other, this Turkish writer passionately embraces his identity while echoing universal human values. A reluctant interpreter of East-West relations, he prefers to see himself as a bridge between the two worlds. A novelist whose aesthetic sensibility is rooted in his beloved Istanbul but draws from the tradition of great Western novelists, he delights in history, memory, and the exploration of the human condition. An outspoken critic of those who try to abridge free speech, he faced imprisonment in 2005 in his own country on this account. His eight novels, which include several international best sellers such as My Name is Red, Snow, and now The Museum of Innocence, are a testament to his profound ingenuity as a writer as well as to his humanity. Nirmala Lakshman recently interviewed Pamuk in Mumbai on his life and work. Excerpts:

Nirmala Lakshman (NL): Beginning with your early books in translation, The White Castle, The Black Book and the very popular My Name is Red down to more recent works like Snow, Istanbul and now of course in the Museum of Innocence, you have explored vast trajectories of history, art, culture, the persistence of memory and tradition in our everyday lives and the poignancy and beauty of the human experience. Your work is also multi-layered, allusive, of multiple genres and in many voices. You seem to want to get in as much as possible and pull everything together. Is this your quest as a novelist?

Orhan Pamuk: Your question suggests that I am an ambitious novelist who wants to explore all the great subjects, and yes, yes, I confess I am like that [smiles]! In My Name is Red I wanted to create a panorama, to look at the spirit of the nation to look at the cultural truth in art. In The Black Book, I look at this spirit through the layers of Istanbul and the enigmas of history. In Snow I see the same culture through politics.

In The Museum of Innocence I am looking at the spirit of the nation this time through love. Maybe it’s not the whole nation but it’s my part of the world, the whole non-western world where all these issues of love in a society where sex outside of marriage is problematical, and there is the taboo of virginity. This book is very popular in China, in Spain and in Italy, in Greece, in the whole of the Mediterranean world, and is also being read in Germany and America. These issues are Turkish issues but not only Turkish issues. In the end this is the story of love in repressed societies where lovers cannot easily negotiate their love. This has qualities of Romeo and Juliet in a post-colonial non-western bourgeois society, and in the wake of the tradition and the aspirations of modernity, posing as more westernised than they really are and how to come to terms with the legacy of culture and religion.

These are the same issues as in the classical Islamic romances. Even in the Turkey of the 1970s, among the so-called upper class bourgeoisie the space for the lovers to meet, to talk, to develop, to explore their love is limited. In Turkey in the 1970s there were no parties to meet the girls [laughs]! But then it’s not only negatively judging about this, but also trying to explore that once there is this kind of suppression, the human heart’s reaction to this is a sort of sophistication of looks, of silences, raising the eyebrow and lovers constantly test their intentions. They cannot communicate, they don’t have the opportunity to talk about love as they do in America. But they test and try to understand each other through a language that they develop sometimes, which is very sophisticated, through looks, silences and little punishments, double meaning, and gestures.

Kemal’s attention to Fusun is in that sense very typical of that lover’s attention to the beloved where there is very little real possibility for coming eye to eye, although Kemal sees Fusun almost every night. Yet there is no communication because they are watching TV together and they are never left alone. The only moments alone are when they are looking at Fusun’s paintings, so instead of judging the culture by saying well, ‘unfortunately, it’s such a repressed society where lovers cannot meet and talk,’ which is the truth, I want to understand the language that they develop.

NL: The fact that she does not acknowledge his looks is also a form of communication. Very often, she gives a cold look or when Kemal looks at her she turns away. This is a very dramatic form of communicating, is it not?

Pamuk: Well, it is true but it is not their only way of communicating. I am just showing different things, different ways, and the themes in The Museum of Innocence, maybe somewhat melodramatically Bollywood or Turkish Hollywood if you like, but treated my way.

NL: You are building your own museum. How is that going?

Pamuk: That’s going on. Lots of people are working on it right now in Istanbul. Architects, builders, and construction people are doing things. I am supervising of course and like my Kemal, I am the curator of this museum. It is so much hard work, and sometimes it is difficult but now I am away from it for a while and resting. I am really very happy about it.

NL: Do you believe then that the everyday objects of our lives really signify the truths of our existence and therefore that ordinary people’s lives are important to document?

Pamuk: Yes, it is one of the points that Kemal makes at the end of the book. This is important particularly in non-Western societies where the idea of museums is not developed. People’s collections, let’s not even call them collections, their gatherings are important. This is important now and I come from an Islamic culture where painting is suppressed. A museum should not just be a place for fancy paintings but should be a place where we can communicate our lives through our everyday objects. Museums are western inventions where the rich and the powerful or the government and the state tend to exhibit the signs and symbol and images of their culture. What my Kemal argues, and I agree with him on that is that we non-western people can also exhibit our humanity through the objects that represent our lives.

NL: It seems that The Museum of Innocence is your favourite book – at least your current favourite book – and a lot of people are reading it here in India.

Pamuk: Yes, yes, I know [smiles]. When I was writing it I used to say to my friends, ‘I will be remembered by this book.’ It is my favourite in the sense I’ve been thinking of writing this book so joyfully and also of making the museum. But I also wrote this book in bad times, when there was political pressure, then there was the Nobel Prize and so much happening, changing cities, airplanes, but it was such happiness. If I wrote one page of this book, I was a happy person that day. It is also one of my favourite books in the sense that it’s based on first-hand experience. I’ve been to the clubs and the places that Kemal had been to, the restaurants and movie houses and so many weddings and engagement parties at the Hilton Hotel in Istanbul. It’s all based on my life.

NL: You keep going back to Istanbul in all your novels, perhaps with the exception of Snow, to old Istanbul and modern Istanbul and your memoirs are also titled Istanbul. It is as if you are the keeper of the soul of Istanbul.

Pamuk: Oh, I am. I think I am [smiles]. Up until the age of 54 I have lived all my life there except for some few years outside. I came across humanity in Istanbul and all I know about life comes from Istanbul and definitely I am writing about Istanbul. I also love the city because I live there, it has formed me, and it’s me. Of course it is natural. If somebody lived all his life in Delhi, he will write about Delhi.

NL: Do you think then in that sense the authentic voice of the writer emerges only when they write about the cultural contexts they are rooted in? How important is it for a writer to be located in this?

Pamuk: Yes and no. The particularities, the uniqueness of any culture is interesting in a novel but novels are more interesting if they go deep into the culture and deeply into the universal, the eternal and what is common to all human hearts. So I am that kind of writer. I want to be that kind of writer in the sense that yes, you would feel, smell and see the colours of Istanbul, but also you must recognise that all human beings are the same everywhere in some sense, but the cultures are different, so they behave differently. So these two things should be visible in my stories, in my novels, and I care about that. The particularities and what is universal. But you don’t look at them too much. You just write your story as it comes to you.

NL: In ‘My Father’s Suitcase,’ your Nobel lecture, which was later published in the New Yorker, you said that initially you did not feel that you were at the centre of things. Do you feel differently now, have you moved to that centre?

Pamuk: Yes. When I began writing, no one cared about Turkey, no one knew about Turkey. In 1985 I went to America for two years and began to write The Black Book around then. Finding that my voice was getting stronger, I really remember thinking, ‘my God these Latin American writers are so lucky, who cares about Turkish writers or Middle Eastern writers or Muslim or Indian or Pakistani writers?’ That’s what I thought then. But the situation has changed in 25 years and during that change my books boomed, I am happy to say that. There are political reasons, cultural reasons, history, all of which changed the world. And now I would say that a big writer from Turkey or the Middle East or India is more visible. Salman Rushdie, for example, was visible in 1981. It all began after that.

NL: So now do you feel that you have come to that place? The centre...

Pamuk: Well, I can’t really say things like that about myself, can I [laughs]? You can...

NL: Are you then comfortable about where you are rooted now, in your own location, in Istanbul, and yet moving on and exploring universal questions?

Pamuk: Yes, but that’s being a writer. It’s not just the roots but the intentions that matter. When the whole world reads your books, is there any other happiness for a writer? I am happy that my books are read in 57 languages. But I am focused on Istanbul not because of Istanbul but because of humanity. Everyone is the same in the end. Whether it is a reader from Buenos Aires or Bombay or Seoul, Korea, they can understand a person from Istanbul, they can understand what is eternal. Of course, there are specific forms of culture in the non-western world, forms of culture of repressive societies where there is still poverty, which is an important problem, there are problems of democracy. These are the things that I am experiencing and the world is experiencing.

NL: In the rise of a new kind of nationalism, do you also see a rise of intolerance, a constant attempt to undermine dissent, and an increase in censorship? You yourself have been a victim of this.

Pamuk: Okay, let's look at this from my experience. There was heavy pressure, they tried to put me in jail, but then they dropped it; this is one side. But in the last ten years, Turkey has been a much more open society, much more free. Free speech is allowed, and the army and all the institutions are criticised. So it is not just only one way. You cannot generalise and say the nation is growing and nations are not speaking, no, but individuality, distinct voices are also growing.When nationalism is growing, most of the time post-colonial societies are getting richer. The ruling elite, a combination of the army and the proletarian and the bourgeoisie, is getting richer. But also the whole nation is growing, so the individual people who are living by themselves, who disagree, their number is also growing. Dissent is also growing along with the country. Dissent and the strength of individual, dignified voices are also growing, you cannot stop it.It's hard to control an open society where people can print their books. You can send these people to jail, but you can't send a whole nation to jail! There will always be central authoritarianism; I expect even more central authoritarian movements if national fundamentalism or religious fundamentalism suppress this. But there will always be dignified people who will pursue their own humours. Whether they will be crushed and sent to jail or whether they will balance the picture is a matter of politics, but I am not pessimistic, as a non-western post colonial nation.Don't forget that Turkey was never a colony. But in the end they grow richer, their national bourgeoisie. So whether it is nationalist-fundamentalist or religious-fundamentalist, whether it is Turkish nationalism or Hindu nationalism, they tend to be authoritarian, and also ethnic, and have tendencies to disrespect minorities. This is one thing. But then, in that nation there are also individual voices, individual voices of the minorities. The number of distinct individuals who would not join the community is also growing. How that will be balanced is interesting – whether the nationalism or fundamentalism in various cultures suppresses those voices or they get out and raise their voices and find a solution to live together.

NL: Is it more the intellectual’s or the writer’s responsibility to shore up this dissent and to constantly resist and critique the attempts to suppress freedom and impose censorship?

Pamuk: We should certainly say it is a writer’s duty, but also any citizen’s. If you are educated and know how the world is operating, of course you have more responsibility. But I don’t want to underline that the fiction writer is more responsible than others to politics. The writers, you know, previous generations of Turkish writers, were so well-meaning. They went into politics and ended up destroying their art – and it turned out to be bad politics too. So in that sense I am not political, I am not a political person.My first motivation is really to write a good Proustian, Nabokovian, Borgesian, whatever you like to call it, beautiful novel rather than think about the politics. Of course, once you live in a troubled part of the world everyone is asking about politics anyway. But I don't try to answer them in my novels. I try to answer them sometimes in my interviews and those interviews always put me into trouble [laughs].

NL: What is the status now of the controversial Turkish law, Article 301, under which you were charged for ‘denigrating Turkishness’ when you commented on the massacre of Kurds and Armenians on Turkish soil?

Pamuk: Now they have changed Article 301, so that coincidentally or by mistake they do not try to punish someone like me [laughs]. They changed the Article so that you have to get permission from the Ministry of Justice to prosecute and, if you are famous, they will not allow it. I can get away with it, but you won’t [laughs]!

NL: In a novel like Snow, through a marvellous range of characters you have projected the possibility that truth can exist in diverse and opposing perspectives. For example, the character Blue raises some important questions. You have also depicted both fundamentalist and secular violence through scenes like the shooting in the national theatre. Are you then trying to say that there is truth in every situation?

Pamuk: I'm not saying there is truth in everything but it is the novel’s job to understand points of view. A novelist's job is not to find political or diplomatic solutions to conflicting desires and pressures. Am I trying to promote this or that in Snow? No, nothing. I just want to see the arena of politics through the participant's point of view, not necessarily agreeing with any of them. Blue, if you ask me, is not like any fundamentalist in my life. But my job as a novelist is to make him convincing and try to see the world through his point of view. His argument, for instance, ‘why should we non-westerners wear a necktie?’ is an essential question that we should understand, right? Why should we imitate with a necktie the western men? It is a valid question. I am not necessarily agreeing with his or anyone else's answer, but it is a question that one should take seriously.

NL: There is that kind of elasticity and richness in the structure and form of your novels: in Snow in a particular way, and then in The Museum of Innocence in quite a different way. In this it is just one beautiful linear progression much like your Aristotelian paraphrasing of time. How do you work on this, I mean does it just come to you or do you consciously work on different structures?

Pamuk: I write slowly, I plan my books. It took me 11 years to develop – I explore – plan the details and write The Museum of Innocence. I’m a slow worker, a hard worker. As such a novel can never come to you like ‘this.’ It's a step-by-step, painstaking organisation, taking notes, preparing scenes, it never comes to you in one light. So a novel develops -- of course I plan ahead – but it also develops as you write it. New ideas come, you read books, you talk to people, you revise, you talk to your friends. It's an immense labour which I love.

NL: Do you think that you will move towards different forms?

Pamuk: Yes, of course, that’s the joy of writing. I never imitated myself, or inhibited myself. The joy of writing is available in each book. Finding a suitable form for the boys and the girls [laughs].

NL: The Museum of Innocence, your newest book is beautiful and brilliant, a haunting work. I was wondering whether you are planning some sort of sequel to this or to any other novel.

Pamuk: No. I have other novel projects. I am writing a novel about a street vendor losing his job in Istanbul in the 70s, in that period. It is not clear yet. Then I have other novel projects, so many. They ask me so many times, ‘Mr. Pamuk, you have the Nobel Prize, but you have this…’ Well, I didn't write this novel after the Nobel Prize; I thought of this ten years ago. But the next novel I am writing is after the Nobel Prize, so I'm planning ahead. I have so many projects in my mind, and really do not look for the success or failure of the previous projects. I already am in the middle of the next one.I'm happy that people like this, yes; this book is very popular all over the world. But writing a sequel, no. Yet, I confess that I might write up one or two sequences of Fusun and Kemal that are not in the book. Why? Because I’m also doing a museum and sometimes think that I may write about one or two groups of objects for one episode which is not in the book. I may write things like that. Also, to make my museum more attractive, with new objects perhaps ten years later.

NL: What is the international quality that you think makes a work of fiction a classic? You are rooted in tradition; Garcia Marquez is rooted in his tradition, Rushdie talks about his India, his Bombay. What is it that makes a novel international or a classic?

Pamuk: In the end, it is a novel that has to be written well, people find their culture and sentiments in it, and it’s in the quality of the novel. We think that it's the culture. You can also write a bad novel living in Istanbul and, believe me, there are so many people like that. So it's not the culture but the writing. Garcia Marquez is a great writer with such immense powers and balance. So it's the writer that makes a subject interesting. There's so much to write, I sometimes think, in Istanbul.But my previous generation of Turkish authors who were some 20 to 30 years older than me, they used to say, ‘you are writing about Istanbul, what’s interesting here? We’re writing about peasants and villagers and bandits and feudal lords.’ And sure, that was interesting reading in the 60s, and I felt all my bourgeois privileges, but what’s interesting about Istanbul, they asked. That was the ideology then and it has changed in 40 years. When I began writing my first novel and told my friends ‘I'm not going to study architecture, I'm going to do a novel,’ my friends said, ‘What, a novel? And you haven't been to a village, you don't even know a peasant, what are you going to write about?’ Because they thought the novel had to be about peasants, and bandits and feudal lords, bad masters, local sheiks, and outlaws and how they were treating the peasants so badly. All the novels were about that!

NL: In what way has the Nobel Prize changed you?

Pamuk: The Nobel Prize and the recognition did not really change my daily life. Writing and writing and writing, that's my only happiness. It made me more visible. I was already translated into 46 languages, and now perhaps 56 languages. But I have millions of readers. It gave me less time, made me more serious about myself, my time, because I feel more responsible. Now if I have say, ‘I'm writing a nice novel,’ I know that it will be published in so many countries, probably 35 or so, so it's a responsibility.You know, you get mails from all over the world, so many people from Korea to Argentina. I was in Guadalajara, at the book fair, and all the Latin American booksellers and publishers, they said, ‘you are so famous,’ and this and that. It's such a joy but such a responsibility too. Then, I also feel, especially in the non-western world or post-colonial world including Latin America, India, and China, that they also identify with me as a non-westerner who is writing about ‘us,’ and is also successful. I care about that so much that, it is such a sweet and dear thing, so I have to be also serious about what I write, and honour that respect and continue writing about ‘us.’

NL: Do you think more such voices are emerging in the literary arena?

Pamuk: Yes, there is a ground for such work especially in India and China. Call it post-colonial or whatever, but the ruling national elite are growing and getting richer and richer, right, and now the trauma is not colonisation. The trauma is, I argue, how post-colonial societies are the colonialism now. In China, in India, in Brazil, in all these countries, the trauma of colonialism and post-colonialism I should say yes, especially in India, it is still around. And now, the ruling national elite, call them party elites, new bourgeoisie, are emerging; a strong middle class is developing. I don't care much about economics. But I know, I travel, and I see that now there is a strong, local demanding bourgeoisie, the elite. Their private lives can only be expressed in literature and that will be done and that will be interesting for the world.Also in these countries, especially in China, I have seen so much demand for international recognition. They feel very frustrated because people say that because of China, prices are going up, or because of India we have pollution, that kind of thing. They want their voices to be heard. It's inevitable, and they are taking over the art of the novel. Everyone is writing novels, so the world will not be saying, as the litterateurs of the French would say, ‘they are imitating.’ That’s over. Some English fancy person writing an experimental novel and we non-westerners trying to understand and writing that in our culture, that will be over! An interesting subject is the new cultural patterns that are emerging in non-western societies. I understand the recognition of my work all over the world in that context. I am aware of the fact that we are all getting to be more interesting.

NL: Does that mean that writers like you have a greater responsibility?

Pamuk: Well, look. I said responsibility of the Nobel Prize, I had that feeling, but I do not want to undermine it. Responsibility, too much responsibility, is not good for fiction. All of my responsible friends went into politics but I stayed at home and wrote my novels. Again, artistic creativity also comes from being a bit irresponsible.

NL: But in a society like India, how can we ignore the divisiveness, the poverty?

Pamuk: You don’t ignore it. It is part of the picture, but it's not the only thing. That's how I see it. My kind of novel is about balancing of the whole picture. I think... I always argue that living in a country with political and economic problems doesn't mean that you have to write cheap and journalistic fiction. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky wrote their fiction in a country where there were such problems but they wrote their fiction well. It's not the job of fiction to solve political problems. That joy of writing books in most political situations – for example living in Afghanistan and you still want to write like Proust – it's not at all a bad thing, please try to do it, boy! In the end you would not be a political person. You would be writing something very interesting, I would say, please trust the autonomy of literature, it will give you back the whole world – not only a sterile autonomy.

NL: Who are your favourite writers?

Pamuk: So many, you know. The greatest living writer in the world is Garcia Marquez. If you're asking me for my favourite novelists ever, there are four: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, and Marcel Proust.

NL: What do you think about making movies out of great novels? Is something always lost in translation?

Pamuk: I'm ill-tempered about that, I'm notorious. There are so many projects that they wanted to shoot. Now Turkish Bollywood sitcoms, they want to do this. I am not enthusiastic. International filmmakers wanted to make Snow, but I was suspicious. Why? Because they will twist the types of Turkey. Bad Turks, Islamic fundamentalists, bad guys, good guys, black-and-white, because that's the nature of movies. Also Turks want to do it; right now the Turkish movie industry is developing but I thought they will not have enough money to take it forward. I'm not good at allowing people to make films from my work. One reason is that I am getting more and more readers all over the world. Why destroy that little growing thing with some movie? I don't need that. I don't need this to happen to me.

NL: What is your own view of how Turkey is moving ahead politically?

Pamuk: Turkey is troubled in its relations with Europe unfortunately, and particularly its relationship with the European Union, I was more positive about it five years ago but it was stopped by the nationalists of Europe and Turkey. They both did not want Turkey in Europe: because Turkey is Islamic, because perhaps Europe is Christian and also democratic. So it's blocked. So many things happened, my case, so many others. It's not a sunny time for Turkish-European relations but democracy in Turkey is developing a bit. There’s a lot of criticism of the involvement of the Army. The attempts at military coups are criticised openly. This is a novelty; ten years ago no one would dare to criticise the Army. If they do a military coup, now they will be criticised. This is a development, a minor development compared with what the rest of humanity is doing.

NL: In that sense even other countries, whether it be China or India or America, move forward and backward in their development. What are your ideas about the directions in which the world is moving?

Pamuk: I'm a writer and I see it more from the literature perspective. I think the world is moving towards the humanity of the non-western world and that will obviously be more visible. What do I mean by that? Middle-class lives in China, in India, in places like Korea, in nations that were neglected, not represented, and then their literature, their voices, their murmurs and all of middle-class life, the private life of the nations that were suppressed will definitely be visible. I can't say this author or that author, but I'm sure we will be reading more Indian literature, because Indian literature in English is slightly more visible, than say, Chinese or Latin American. But I would say, the private lives of non-western nations will be more visible in future. That I can only say. Non-western writers will be more visible and domination of the European-American small world – they were dominating the whole world – that domination will be less. But it's not an animosity, it's not a clash, it's a friendship.We have learned the art of the novel from them – Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Proust, Mann. These are my brothers; I am not fighting with them.

NL: Do you think writing in your own language, Turkish, is the reason for the growth in this kind of non-western writing or do you think there has to be a translation of all this for a wider recognition?

Pamuk: Yes, I am a Turk. I have been born to Turkey, there is no alternative. Turkish is a remote language no one knows and I'm born into it and I am supposed to, I want to write in Turkish all my life. I learned English late in life. I write better, my qualities are better, in Turkish. In that I am like a Korean or a Finnish writer or like a Hungarian writer. You are born into these languages and the fact that no one translates, no one reads, I suffered so much for 20 years. You can't find a translator... no publisher can find a reader in Turkish who could advise if this book is publishable.This problem will continue. For a Hungarian or Korean or Finnish writer or a writer writing in a local Indian language, there is no solution to this. For those writing in English the accusations of, ‘Oh, you are writing in English to serve the Americans,’ etc., will never end! I think everyone should pursue his or her own humours. I wrote in the language that I spoke with my grandfather and grandmother and there was no second language too. Some people have second languages; they’ve got one language at home, another language at the grocery store, another language at school! So there’s now a reasonable dilemma: shall I write in the language that I speak to the government, or school in, the language I speak at the grocery store, or the language I speak with my grandmother? That's the dilemma, I understand that. But I spoke the same language at school, the same language at the grocery store, the same language with my mother, the same language in my newspaper. I didn't have any alternative. Turkey's case, the inevitability of me writing in Turkish, is not the same often as in the case of Indian writers who have a choice between two or three languages. All these writers who are arguing – I know about these issues – with each other; it’s valid but also damning. I don't want to take any sides, I understand each side's point of view, but thank God I didn't have that option! I also regret it so many times, ‘Oh, I'm so unlucky, I'm not lucky like those Indian writers who’re writing in English and next day get published in Harper-Collins.’ I got my first book published when I was almost 40! It was not easy! They said, ‘What, a Turk, forget it!’

NL: But there is a beauty, a lyricism, and poetry in this book [The Museum of Innocence] which I think has not been lost in the translation.Oh, I am pleased with this book and I work with the translators. You also lose so much money working with the translators [laughs]. Those writers who are writing in English are lucky in that it is their language too. Being a writer is so much hard work, but I'm not complaining..

"Animal Spirits " by David Akerlof

2009-12-29T10:00:00.000-08:00

" The human mind is built to think in terms of narratives, of sequenes of events with an internal logic, and dynamic that appear as a unified whole !

In turn, much of human motivation comes from living through a story of our lives, a story, that we tell to ourselves and that creates a framework for motivation ! Life could be just " one damn thing after another " if it weren't for such stories.

This is true for confidence in a nation, a company or an institution or any organization. Great leaders are first and foremost, creators of stories ! The confidence of a narration, or of a large group tends to revolve around stories !

Of relevance are , new era stories, those , that purport to describe historic changes that will propel the economy into a brand new era.

Confidence is not , just the emotional state of an individual. It is a view of other people's confidence, and of other people's perceptions of other people's confidence !

Confidence then, is also a view of the world - a popular model of current events, a public understanding of the mechanism of economic change as informed by the news media and by popular discussions. High confidence tends to be associcated with inspirations stories , stories about the new business initiatives, tales of how others are getting rich.

The complexity of the different new era stories through time suggests that, differences in confidence have had many effects on the economy beyond the impact on consumption and investment. Changes in these stories will affect the expectations for personal success in business, for the success of entrepreneurial ventures and for payoffs to human capital investments.

( excerpt from " Animal Spirits " by George Akerlof -winner of Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001)

review : 'Mistakes were Made'

2009-02-23T01:46:00.000-08:00

Came across this book, " Mistakes were made ( but not by me ! ), Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts " by by Carol Tavris, Elliot Aronson. Even review reading turned out to be superb. Editorial reviews from Amazon are here.
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Review

"Witty, provocative, and impressively documented, this work lights a candle in cursed darkness."—LOS ANGELES TIMES

"A rare gem of a book, easy to read but also scientifically sophisticated."—CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY
"Social psychologists Tavris and Aronson, each of whom has published other works, here tackle "the inner workings of self-justification," the mental gymnastics that allow us to bemoan the mote in our brother''s eye while remaining blissfully unaware of the beam in our own. Their prose is lively, their research is admirable and their examples of our arrogant follies are entertaining and instructive." (Arkansas Democrat Gazette )

"A fascinating book... I recommend it to anyone who enjoys psychological and sociological studies. Sometimes floored, sometimes angry, sometimes sad, sometimes amused, but always interested, I can only hope that I will be able to apply some of what I learned in my own life." (Bookgarden )

"A pathbreaking book that could change forever how leaders think about the decisions they make . Crackles with new insights and understanding. A must read!" (Burt Nanus )

"This book should make it to the top of most summer reading lists. It speaks to the forces that keep us repeating harmful mistakes, whether it''s an everyday personal issue or an organization-wide problem. I''m interested in reading this book for a deeper window into my own behavior, but also for insight into the reasons that corruption persists around the world and vexes so many organizational and individual efforts to fight it." (Business Week Online )

"In this pre-election time, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson''s book bears a very prescient message: Just how does one learn from one''s mistakes if one refuses to admit culpability? With straightforward language and a readable style, Tavris and Aronson''s book will open your eyes and improve your life - that is, it will if you let it." (curled up with a good book.com )

"This book is charming and delightful. But mainly, it''s just damn smart. Armed with reams of scientific data and loads of real-world anecdotes, Tavris and Aronson explain how politicians, pundits, doctors, lawyers, psychotherapists--and oh yes, the rest of us--come to believe that we are right and reasonable... and why we maintain that dangerous self-deception in the face of glaring evidence to the contrary. Every page sparkles with sharp insight and keen observation. Mistakes were made--but not in this book!" (Daniel Gilbert )

"To err is human, to rationalize even more so. Now, thanks to this brilliant book, we can finally see how and why even the best meaning people may justify terrible behavior. Mistakes Were Made will not turn us into angels, but it is hard to think of a better -- or more readable -- guide to the mind''s most devilish tricks." (David Callahan )

"Tavris and Aronson-a dream team of two of psychology's greatest communicators-investigate our self-serving explanations and malleable memories, explaining how well-meaning people stay the course when pursuing ill-fated ventures, then shuck responsibility when failure arrives. This is a fascinating exploration of our astonishing powers of self-justification." (David Myers )

"Combining far-ranging scholarship with lucid, witty prose, Tavris and Aronson illuminate many of the mysteries of human behavior -- why hypocrites never see their own hypocrisy, why couples so often misremember their shared history, why many people persist in courses of action that lead straight into quicksand. A delight to read, with surprising revelations in every chapter." (Elizabeth Loftus )

"This eye-opener of a book is essential reading, not because we''ve all made mistakes - certainly not! - but because we''ve all been victims of mistakes made by others. Why do these people behave so badly? Tavris and Aronson''s explanation is illuminating, entertaining, based on solid science, and highly relevant to our public and private lives." (Judith Rich Harris )

"Please, somebody, get a copy of this book to the President and his cabinet right away. Read it aloud into the Congressional Record. If this book doesn''t change the way we think about our mistakes, then we''re all doomed." (Michael Shermer )

"A revelatory study of how lovers, lawyers, doctors, politicians--and all of us--pull the wool over our own eyes. The politician who can''t apologize, the torturer who feels no guilt, the co-worker who''ll say anything to win an argument--in case you''ve ever wondered how such people can sleep at night, a new book by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson supplies some intriguing and useful insights. Thanks, in part, to the scientific evidence it provides and the charm of its down-to-earth, commonsensical tone, Mistakes Were Made is convincing. Reading it, we recognize the behavior of our leaders, our loved ones, and--if we''re honest--ourselves, and some of the more perplexing mysteries of human nature begin to seem a little clearer. By the book''s end, we''re far more attuned to the ways in which we avoid admitting our missteps, and intensely aware of how much our own (and everyone''s) lives would improve if we--and those who govern and lead us--understood the power and value of simply saying, ''I made a mistake. I''m sorry.''" (Francine Prose O Magazine )

"Tavris and Aronson have combined their formidable skills to produce a gleaming model of social insight and scientific engagement. Make no mistake, you need to read this book." (Robert B. Cialdiani )

"Written with the perfect combination of science and snap, this is a book that will change the way you think about self-deception--how it works, the harm it can cause, and how we can overcome it." (The General Psychologist )

"Anecdote-rich...a ramble through the evasive tactics we employ when we''ve done something wrong and don''t want to face up to it. "Mistakes Were Made" is by turns entertaining, illuminating and--when you recognize yourself in the stories it tells--mortifying. It is certainly true that we can be artful to the point of self-delusion when we feel guilt for something we have done." (Wall Street Journal )

"This book casts a bright and penetrating light on how and why nation-states, organizations, and individuals get into malignant messes. But it also shows how they (NOT us) cluelessly keep repeating these offensive, sometimes criminal acts. Tavris and Aronson don''t let any of us off the hook but they do teach us how to avoid hanging ourselves on that hook again and again. One of the most needed and important books for our time." (Warren Bennis ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Why do people dodge responsibility when things fall apart? Why the parade of public figures unable to own up when they screw up? Why the endless marital quarrels over who is right? Why can we see hypocrisy in others but not in ourselves? Are we all liars? Or do we really believe the stories we tell?

Renowned social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification. When we make mistakes, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right—a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong.

Backed by years of research and delivered in lively, energetic prose, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinating explanation of self-deception—how it works, the harm it can cause, and how we can overcome it.

Link to full amazon review is HERE !

(amazon) 'Cat's cradle' by Kurt Vonnegut

2008-12-28T09:48:00.000-08:00

Read this review on 28.Dec.2008.

http://www.amazon.com/Cats-Cradle-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/038533348X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230484593&sr=1-2

"Lazy Man's guide to entertainment " by Thaddeus Golas

2007-08-26T22:02:00.000-07:00

Reading " metamorphosis " e-zine in my indiatimes email. They referred to this book , this author whose book has rave reviews in amazon.com. About love and ' hippie spirituality'.

" Lazy Man's guide to enlightenment ' by Thaddeus Golas.

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Book Description$10.95 cloth hardcover 1-58685-190-X 5 x 7 in, 112 pp, Rights: W, Self-Help Originally published by the author in 1972, the underground classic Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment teaches how to improve the quality of life, to feel good, and to determine what's real. Golas leads the reader down the path toward enlightenment with simple steps, like memorizing key phrases and incorporating them into daily life and thought. Think of how much better your life might be if you reminded yourself to "love as much as you can from wherever you are" or "love it the way it is." This classic book is full of useful tips on how to live a more conscious life and to be an engaged and aware member of the universal community. "While we have humility and pride enough to act on the knowledge that we exist in an infinite harmony, that we are neither greater nor lesser than any others, we can enjoy exquisite spiritual wealth and pleasures. When you love yourself, you are in truth expanding in love into many other things. And the more loving you are, the more loving the beings within and around you. On all levels we are mutually dependent vibrations. Play a happy tune and happy dancers will join your trip." - From The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment After serving in World War II, author Thaddeus Golas graduated from Columbia College in New York. He later moved to San Francisco, where he became involved in the activism and spiritual quests of the 1960s. He was an editor of Redbook magazine and a book representative for publisher Harper and Row. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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FIRST REVIEW
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The lazy person's Dhammapada, December 31, 2002
By
John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Silver Lake, OH) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment (Hardcover) I've never been interested in having a guru, and Thaddeus Golas was never interested in being one. He wasn't looking for converts, followers, or even agreement, and I've always felt free to disagree with the way he makes this or that point. So this book has long been perfectly suited to me and my somewhat iconoclastic/refractory temperament.
This little book is one of a very small handful that I regard as the absolute cream of "hippie spirituality". Stephen Gaskin's _This Season's People_ is that literature's Diamond Sutra and Paul Williams's _Das Energi_ is its Tao Te Ching. Golas's slim volume comes very close to Gaskin's in its adamantine wisdom and so ranks as a close second in diamond-sutrahood, but I think of it as something like the Dhammapada.
Its message is so easy to put across that, technically, you already know everything it says. The heart of the matter is: relax; just love as much as you can from wherever you are. When you come right down to it, you're already "enlightened" and you don't have anything to prove.
But somehow, the _way_ Golas puts this message (and the bit about "love as much as you can" is a direct quotation) has some major mojo in it, enough to knock your mind loose from your brain.
Golas knew it, too. He died in 1997, but a couple of years before that, he wrote a nice long introduction to this book so that it could be republished in hardcover. It was, and this is that edition. There are also some photos of Golas, ranging from childhood to middle age. (That's good for potential buyers to know, because the full text of the original book is available online and there wouldn't be much point in getting this one if it didn't contain anything new.)
In the introduction, Golas provides some interesting autobiography and also expresses more than a little wonderment at the effect this little book has had. He even notes that there are some things in it that he's even come to believe are incorrect, and yet he won't change a word of it because it seems to have the power to _do_ something to its readers, something compared to which his "corrected" views seem flat and tame. This is quite true. So beware; in its way this text is every bit as potent as all of Anthony de Mello's books.
A longtime "underground" spiritual classic, this little book belongs on your shelf next to Douglas Harding's _On Having No Head_ (which takes a very different but every bit as "simple" approach to the non-problem of enlightenment).

Muktar Mai ; " In the name of honour"

2007-08-26T11:37:00.000-07:00

Throughout the book she describes herself as an illiterate woman, but emerges as one of the most articulate, courageous and insightful women you have ever met. The story of Pakistani peasant woman Mukhtar Mai's gang rape and humiliation in the name of `honour' is told by Marie-Therese Cuny (translated from French by Linda Coverdale) in the book In the Name of Honour (Published by Atria books).
This is a poignant, heart-wrenching tale of the atrocious customs in the tribal regions of Pakistan, where women are made to pay for the sins — real and concocted — of their men. The ordeal of Mukhtar, a 30-year-old divorced Gujar woman in Meerawala village near Muzaffargarh in Pakistan's Punjab region, begins on June 22, 2002, when she is tricked into appearing before the village jirga ostensibly to apologise for the `crime' committed by her 12-year-old brother in daring to talk with a woman from the powerful Mastoi community.
But to their shock her family finds Mukhtar being given the punishment of gang rape.
Under the guise of restoring their honour four Mastoi "drag me away like a goat led to slaughter"; after the gang rape she is thrown out half-naked in front of the entire village, and her father has to cover her nakedness with his shawl and take her home. Most women who get such brutal and dehumanising punishment end up committing suicide, says Mukhtar, adding, "They know that a woman humiliated in that way has no other recourse except suicide. They don't even need to use their weapons. Rape kills her. Rape is the ultimate weapon; it shames the other clan forever."
Initially she too wants to do the same, but her vigilant mother prevents this, till anger and the desire for revenge overwhelms her. But she has neither money nor weapons to get her tormentors killed. As days roll by, she is determined to file a police complaint and get justice. The twists and turns her attempts take, with the police constantly trying to foil her attempts at justice are captured in the moving story.
The fight begins
As the national and international media zeroes in on the story and human rights activists take up her case, Mukhtar defies all attempts by the Pakistani authorities to silence her voice. Finally the administration is forced to take notice and act. But not before she is accused of selling herself to `foreign agents' out to besmirch the image of Pakistan in the international arena.
Under international scrutiny the Pakistan government awards her compensation of $8,500 and her story reported in the American media also fetches more money. The rapists are sentenced to death, but predictably enough the administration system takes its own time to punish the guilty. She is prevented from travelling abroad on invitations from US, Canada and European countries and her passport is taken away as "the President (Pervez Musharraf) himself seems to feel that we must avoid giving the nation a bad image abroad."
Worse, the Lahore High Court reverses the decision of the antiterrorism court granting death penalty to six people; they are acquitted and released from jail, and Mukhtar and her family are petrified about the backlash; their very lives are at stake.
But the most remarkable quality of Mukhtar, by now a woman possessed with a sense of mission, is her tenacity and she refuses to give up. The police pressurises her into signing blank papers that are then filled up with completely conflicting versions of her actual story, angering judicial officers. Her helplessness and frustration at her illiteracy and inability to understand what the judge is saying at the several court hearings her case goes through open her eyes to her greatest handicap — illiteracy.
Apart from taking revenge on her tormentors, Mukhtar is consumed by the passion to ensure that no other girl in her village remains illiterate. With her compensation money, the money raised through the American media and help from the Canadian embassy in Islamabad, she builds a school for girls in her village. Naseem, the principal of her school, becomes not only her solid supporter but also her best friend.
As Mukhtar's story spreads, female victims of the `war for honour' fought by men start coming to her seeking solace and with the zeal of a missionary she listens to their tales and gives them advice and support.
Gender statements
While Mukhtar's story is one of the indomitable human spirit and immense courage in the face of adversities, what comes through most vividly from her narrative are the powerful, eloquent and soul searing gender statements. Throughout the book she reflects on the unequal battle women of her ilk have to fight all the time. Often she admits to feeling broken and defeated; her battle is not an easy one, as she points out: "Both the ordeal that destroyed my peaceful life and this resounding victory hailed by the media depress me no end — I'm tired of talking, of having to deal with men and their laws. People say that I'm heroic, when I'm utterly exhausted. I used to laugh and be merry, but I've lost that gaiety."
Counting her blessing for getting solid support from her family in her ordeal, Mukhtar muses on the plight of most women who do not have such support, and while doing so captures beautifully, and without any fuss or frills, the situation of millions of women in the sub-continent: "A woman here has nothing solid to stand on. When she lives with her parents, she does what they want. Once she has joined her husband's household, she follows his orders. When her children are grown, her sons take over, and she belongs to them in the same way. My destination is to have broken free of that submission. Freed from my husband, childless, I can now seek the honour of taking care of other people's children."
Mukhtar's story also brings out as poignantly, as forcefully, the miserable plight of the Pakistani women entangled in different legal systems — the government's law, Islamic law, and the laws devised by the various tribal and village councils. And, of course, the village council meetings are all presided by men. "Women have always been excluded from meetings, even though they are the ones — as mothers, grandmothers, the custodians of daily life — who understand family problems the best. Men's contempt for their intelligence is what pushes women aside. I don't dare hope that one day, even in the distant future, a village council will accept the participation of women."
She adds that under such law women are "exchanged as merchandise" to resolve conflicts with the "punishment" meted out to them being either rape or marriage by force. "This behaviour is not what the Koran teaches us," argues Mukhtar, who though illiterate, had learnt the Koran by heart by listening to it, and taught passages to children, before this ordeal came her way.
The entire effort has to be complimented for the firm yet calm and dignified manner in which Mukhtar challenges stereotypes, questions Pakistan's judicial system and exposes the rank corruption in the law and order machinery which always favours the rich and the powerful. Thousands of women from Indian villages can glimpse their own grim lives — the helplessness and frustration they live with in a very unequal world — in Mukhtar's story.
As women who are raped or disfigured with acid in the name of `honour' flock to her, Mukhtar ponders: "Sometimes the magnitude of the problem overwhelms me. Sometimes I'm so angry I can hardly breathe. But I never despair. My life has a meaning. My misfortune has become useful to the community."
As her educational venture adds one more school, this time for boys, Mukhtar's comment leaves us with a lot of food for thought. "Educating girls is rather easy, whereas boys, who are born into this world of brutes and learn from their elders' behaviour, present a more difficult challenge. The justice dispensed to women must educate them with each passing generation, since suffering and tears teach them nothing."

"Evolution of Cooperation" by Robert Axelrod

2007-08-26T11:21:00.000-07:00

I came across this name and author in ' Business and Economy' mag ; although I am not having time these days to read all the mags i am getting.

Visited amazon. Here is the page that reviews http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Cooperation-Robert-Axelrod/dp/0465005640/ref=sr_1_1/105-7335050-7022037?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188152005&sr=1-1 the book.

Related reading and similar books that customers bought or enquired or browsed, also makes exciting. Here is the first review sample.
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If you read this book as long ago as I did, you probably first heard about it from Douglas Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas" column in _Scientific American_, or the book in which his columns were collected. (If you're just now being introduced to this book, check out Hofstadter's too; his discussion of it is very helpful and insightful.)

What Robert Axelrod describes in this book is a novel round-robin tournament (actually two such tournaments) in which various game-theoretic strategies were pitted against one another in the game known as the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Each strategy was scored, not according to how many times it "beat" its "opponent," but according to how many points it accumulated for itself. The surprising result: a strategy dubbed TIT FOR TAT, submitted by Anatol Rapaport, cleaned everybody's clocks in both tournaments.

Why was this surprising? First, because TIT FOR TAT was such a simple strategy. It didn't try to figure out what its "opponent" was going to do, or even keep much track of what its "opponent" had _already_ done. All it did was cooperate on the first move, and thereafter do whatever its "opponent" had done on the previous move. And second, because this strategy can _never_ do better than its "opponent" in any single game; the best result it could achieve, in terms of comparison with the other player, is a tie.

So it was odd that such a simple strategy, one that went up against all sorts of sophisticated strategies that spent a lot of time trying to dope out what their "opponents" were up to, should do so much better than all the "clever" strategies. And it was also odd that a strategy that could never, ever "beat" its "opponent" should nevertheless do so much better _overall_ than any other strategy.

As Axelrod is careful to point out, this isn't always true; how well TIT FOR TAT does depends on the population with which it's surrounded, and in fact it wouldn't have won even _these_ tournaments if certain other strategies had participated. But TIT FOR TAT is surprisingly robust, and its success does offer some tentative political lessons. Axelrod spells them out, in the form of principles like "Be nice and forgiving" -- which means: never be the first to defect; be quick to forget what your "opponent" has done in the past. And in a follow-up computer simulation, he shows that it's possible -- under some conditions -- for a little cadre of "cooperators" to increase their numbers and "take over" a population that practices other strategies.

Axelrod's research was and is important for several reasons, one of which has to do with evolutionary theory: it shows that, under the right conditions, natural selection can tend to generate cooperation rather than competition, even among actors who act solely out of self-interest. Another has to do with the spontaneous growth of cooperative behavior in predominantly competitive or hostile environments (Axelrod's examples include holiday cease-fires in the trenches during the First World War). Yet another has to do with the need (or otherwise) for external authorities to _enforce_ cooperative behavior -- a point not lost on Axelrod's libertarian and/or Hayekian readers, including myself.

Nevertheless, as groundbreaking as this work is, the results are modest and Axelrod states them very cautiously. TIT FOR TAT doesn't _always_ "win," and in any case not all of our social interactions can be modelled as Iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas. It's a _very_ hopeful book, but readers will want to be careful not to claim more for Axelrod's results than he claims for them himself.

Dangerous idea is ‘the idea that ideas can be dangerous’

2007-08-20T04:46:00.000-07:00

It was a genetic breakthrough that made us capable of ideas in the first place, says Seth Lloyd, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.

“Ideas have had their impact for good… But one of these days, one of those nice ideas is likely to have the unintended consequence of destroying everything we know,” he writes in one of the brief essays included in What is Your Dangerous Idea? edited by John Brockman ( http://www.landmarkonthenet.com/ ).

The title draws from the question posed to the readers by ‘Edge’ ( http://www.edge.org/ ). And the responses fill the book, as ‘a celebration of the ideas of the third culture’.

The ‘dangerous ideas’ are not about harmful technologies and WMDs, but about statements of fact or policy evidenced by science, which are ‘felt to challenge the collective decency of an age’.
Every era has its dangerous ideas, notes the intro. “Time and again people have invested factual claims with ethical implications that today look ludicrous.”

There are a few mercies, however.

“Punishments have changed from torture and mutilation to cancelling of grants and the writing of vituperative reviews.”

The opening essay, ‘we have no souls’, by John Horgan, director of the Centre for Science Writings, dangerously proposes that when our minds can be programmed like personal computers, then perhaps we will finally abandon ‘the belief that we have immortal, inviolable souls – unless, of course, we program ourselves to believe.’

Rodney Brooks, author of ‘Flesh and Machines’, wonders if we might find ourselves to be alone, not just in the solar system, but in the galaxy.

The shock could ‘drive us to despair and back toward religion as our salve,’ he postulates.
In a similar vein, Keith Devlin of Stanford University suggests that we are entirely alone. Yet, “The fact that our existence has no purpose for the universe – whatever that means – in no way means that it has no purpose for us,” he declares. “I don’t share my most dangerous ideas,” protests W. Daniel Hillis, chairman of Applied Minds, Inc.

“I have often seen otherwise thoughtful people so caught up in such an idea that they seem unable to resist sharing it. To me, the idea that we should all share our most dangerous ideas is itself a very dangerous idea. I hope it never catches on.”

On the contrary, to Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University, the only dangerous idea is, ‘the idea that ideas can be dangerous’.

We live in a world in which people are beheaded, imprisoned, demoted, and censured simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air, he rues.
“Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we’re in one.”

Cyberdisinhibition is dangerous, according to Daniel Goleman, author of ‘Emotional Intelligence’. A major disconnect between the ways our brains are wired to connect and the interface offered in online communications, he cautions.

“The Internet may harbour social perils that our inhibitory circuitry was not evolutionarily designed to handle.”

Kevin Kelly, editor at large of Wired feels that it is dangerous to think that more anonymity is good.

“Privacy can be won only by trust, and trust requires persistent identity, if only pseudoanonymously,” he says. “In the end, the more trust the better. Like all toxins, anonymity should be kept as close to zero as possible.”

Recommended read to detox a tired mind.

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